Pinterest gets $100 Million in funding from Rakuten, Japan

Social media is on the high these days. In fact, it’s really a very hot space. Recently launched and then immediately popular social networking website, ‘Pinterest’ today received a substantial funding of $100 from Rakuten, Inc Japan. The investment related talk between the two, began in January 2012.

Pinterestwebsite – is a social photo sharing site where you can create pin boards, then pin various photos on to it and share them with the world. People can also click on ‘Pin it’ button available on various websites to ‘Pin’ them on boards as favorites.

According to the press release from Rakuten, the company is interested in partnering with Pinterest, rapid growth in popularity across the world in short period of time. Rakuten thinks, this strategic partnership with Pinterest (which has over 20+ million users worldwide.) will help expand its business reach in Japan

Pinterest – a relatively small silicon valley company, now joins a bigger league of companies valued at $1 billion (even though, the site is not making much revenue at the moment).

Pinterest analysts say , the site is not profitable and does not have a definite revenue model. However, the inverters are seeing lot of revenue potential in it.

Many big brands are using this new innovative photo sharing website now and the Pinterest button has earned a space to sit beside bigger players such as Facebook and Twitter on thousands of websites.

Adding pins on Pinterest board is free for any level (Personal, Corporate or Brand ) of user but, the website may charge this to certain types of users in future. That’s where the money game starts.

Would you pay for pinning on Pinterest? Let’s leave that for some other day 🙂